


glitter in your tears (and salt in mine)

by theviolonist



Category: American Actor RPF, Fashion Model RPF, Gossip Girl RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 05:06:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you ever get tired of being just a pretty face?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	glitter in your tears (and salt in mine)

 

“Bitch,” Andrej says mischievously, a star gleaming on his lips.  
  
Chace's face must look a bit shocked at the unexpected insult, because Andrej laughs and jabs him in the ribs, a little clumsily.  
  
“What? Don't they teach you bad words at the CW?” he mocks.  
  
Chace swats him on the arm, mock-scowling. (They don't.)  
  
They fled the party a while ago, sneakily sliding though the backdoor with childish giggles. They tend to grow bored of all these people telling them the same things all the time, congratulating Chace on his success and pinching his cheeks as though he were a rag doll, and gawking at Andrej – 'how can you be so pretty?'; 'loved you in this wedding dress'. Can't people at least try to be original?  
  
They found a nice-looking wall – Chace is quite happy with it, to be honest. It's all grey and miraculously untagged, except a simple, laconic line that says, 'You don't know life until you've lived it' with a flourish on the first 'y'. It's perfect. Maybe Chace wouldn't be so enthusiastic about it if he hadn't already had two – or three. Or five – glasses of champaign at the reception, but he was bored. And he isn't drunk on champaign.  
  
That would be ridiculous.  
  
“Pass the bottle,” Andrej says, gesturing at the bottle of vodka that is dangling from Chace's fingers, and he adds, “bitch,” with a ferocious, kind of provocative smile.  
  
“Yes, ma'am,” Chace jokes.  
  
He takes a swig at the bottle before passing it to Andrej, enjoying the bittersweet trail the alcohol burns in his throat.  
  
They get drunk slowly but surely, silently trading the bottle, eyes fixed on the city that spreads beneath them, sprawled and glittering like a contented feline. It must be beautiful, Chace thinks, but he's forgotten how to appreciate it. It feels like he's been here for too long, hundreds of years, maybe. Forever.  
  
He remembers how he met Andrej. It was at a party the CW was giving for something – he couldn't say what, he doesn't care. He remembers having been stricken at the stupefying vision of him – this thin, tall woman, her white-blond hair tied on her nape in a complicated bun, laughing a warm, deep-throated laugh. He even remembers how she was dressed, the way the blue-green fabric changed colors and sometimes gave away a sliver of creamy skin... He remembers her turning sharply to talk to someone and how he recognized her from the mole above her left lip. Andrej Pejic, he'd thought (because Chace is interested in fashion, which probably makes him metrosexual or something, but he honestly couldn't care less).  
  
“Do you ever get tired of being just a pretty face?” Chace blurts at some point, for a reason that is honestly beyond him. He doesn't even  _know_  Andrej that well.  
  
Andrej smiles, a bit sadder than before, his pupils sparkling with all the diamonds the night lights puts in them.  
  
“Nah, not really. That's kind of my job, you know?” he says lightly, and Chace knows it's a lie, but he doesn't call him on it. It's late. ('I'm not just a pretty face,' he hears in the words Andrej doesn't say.)  
  
“Hm,” he says, and the sound buzzes pleasantly in his mouth.  
  
Andrej doesn't  _care_. Chace admires him for that. He doesn't need this life to be someone. He was already someone when he got here, and he had his scars and his secrets and his past. Oh, he likes the fame – Andrej is an attention-whore if anything – but he says when it's all over he'll retire and feed chicken in a farm somewhere far away. He's joking (at least Chace  _thinks_  he's joking) but there's something true in there.  
  
Chace just can't imagine it being over.  
  
Chace... there's nothing he's more afraid of than losing this life. He feels like he doesn't exist without it – and yes, he knows that fame can be hard sometimes and globally isn't all it's chalked up to be, but it doesn't matter, because he loves it. He loves it so much it hurts.  
  
He's not sure he could come back to a life of struggling to chose between careers, without passion, without drivel. He's nothing outside of this life of glam and cruelty and fake gold. It's a little pathetic, he knows that, but it's true.  
  
Andrej is different. If you had to describe him, it's like... it's – first you see him in the shadows, head ducked, nothing but a long, thin frame. Girly eyelashes. Straight nose. Long hair. Nothing but the very basics of the human body, but there's something already, something that's pulling you in.  
  
Then there's a flash of light and you get a glimpse of him. You see blond locks and full, luscious lips. Shining eyes. You hear his voice, high and then low, laughing a high-pitched laugh and then dropping to tell a story, gossipy and a little cynic. His top is riding up – the sliver of bare skin at his hip is already too much. You want to breathe. You can't.  
  
Eventually he steps into the light. A glance isn't enough to take in his beauty; you can't help but let your eyes slide along the curve of a white, swan-like neck, a bared shoulder, a back that arches when he throws his head back to laugh, honeyed and husky. You see him eye someone and you think, 'No', because he seems a little vulgar and shallow.  
  
It's too late, though. You know that. He knows too.  
  
Andrej is different. A lifetime wouldn't be enough to read him. When he was in Milan, a few months ago (Andrej told him the story a while later, a pleased glint in his eyes), Miuccia Prada came to visit the store he was fitting at. She looked him over ( _very_  slowly, Andrej says with delight, her eyes raking over his body like lasers), and then stayed for his whole shoot. When it was over, and when asked what she thought of him, the latest fashion phenomenon ('creature,' people say sometimes, but Andrej just shrugs it off like it's nothing), she just said: ' _La dona e mobile._ '  
  
Chace thinks it's about the most perfect definition you can give of Andrej Pejic.  
  
But whatever. It's way too late and he's way too drunk to be this serious.  
  
He reaches out to grab the bottle and is surprised to find that he's slid all the way down Andrej's shoulder, and now his head is resting on his lap. Andrej doesn't seem to mind, though, and Chace decides he doesn't either – why would he? The night is warm and motherly around them, protecting them like a wooly cocoon; they could stay like that forever, lost into this comfortable haze, electricity burning at their fingertips.  
  
But everything – everything happens so fast, here. Chace doesn't have the time to do anything – does't have the time to _think_ , for God's sake – that already things are happening and taking him by surprise, make him tip over and fall. Like now.  
  
Like now, Andrej's leaning down and kissing him full on the lips, hot and dirty – just like Chace hadn't imagined it would be, with tongue and a little bit of teeth, nipping and teasing. He doesn't have the time to know what's happening, why, how. He doesn't have the time to think, it's just  _here_ , right now, hot breath on his lips and the magnetic pleasure twisting his insides.  
  
Chace doesn't like it. He'd like to believe that people think as much as he does, but deep inside he knows they don't, and sometimes he feels like an idiot, missing a life that spends itself before his eyes while he observes with a disappointed smile. 'Stop over-thinking everything,' people always say to him, like he even  _could_ , like he doesn't fucking  _wish_  he could, for God's sake.  
  
So he kisses back.  
  
He doesn't really mean to – it just happens. One minute he's reflecting over his incapability to live in the moment, and the next the hot, wet slide of their tongues sends a spark all the way down to his toes. Andrej smiles against his lips.  
  
( _Victory_ , his teeth seem to say, scraping the enamel of Chace's).  
  
It all happens so fast – it makes Chace dizzy, his head pounding to the beat of an imaginary drum, fast and urgent. Andrej's hand in his pants, his hand, cold and moist at the same time, his smile, his head, nestled in the crook of Chace's shoulder, his hair, tickling Chace's arm, the sharp, electric pleasure-pain of his sucking the flesh of Chace's neck... Chace barely has the time to utter a moan that already Andrej's hand is moving in sharp, precise strokes, and Chace's head threatens to explode with impossible pleasure.  
  
Then it's over. Andrej draws his hand back with a wicked grin and gives it a playful lick before wiping it on a tissue he gets in his handbag – the sort of bags girls have, Chace's clouded mind tells him, full of mysteries and secrets. He's still as pristine as he was at the beginning of the night, and he looks at Chace, panting and astonished, with a mocking smile.  
  
Then someone calls him from the distance and he says he has to go, they need him there, apparently, and just like that, he's gone, throwing Chace a wink over his shoulder.  
  
Chace watches him as he walks away, mesmerized by the languorous swagger of his hips, and lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.  
  
*  
  
For some reason (that Chace dutifully doesn't investigate), Andrej calls him a week later and asks – demands, more like – to 'hang out'. Chace doesn't know how he got his number, or what 'hang out' even means, but he accepts nonetheless. He's not really sure he ever had a choice, anyway.  
  
Andrej's place is a complete, utter mess. The floor is littered with solitary high heels, books thrown open on the ground like agonizing animals, their spine broken (Chace catches the name 'Freud' in Gothic letters on one of them and doesn't know what to make of it), feathery boas and ratty T-shirts. Andrej doesn't apologize for the mess, just shrugs it off with a laugh and leads Chace through it, bringing back to Chace's mind the memory of a legend he heard in school when he was a kid – Ariadne leading Aeneas through the mythological maze, red wool trailing after her like a bad omen. He doesn't ask himself about symbolism.  
  
Sometimes he would like his mind to shut up. It never does.  
  
Andrej is unsurprisingly beautiful. He's dressed more low-key than the last time – androgynous T-shirt and deep red velvet pants – but he's gorgeous nonetheless, his hair just a little wild and his lips swollen as though he's just been kissed. His bare feet swish on the rare portions of clear floor. Chace doesn't find it in him to be jealous. It must be a sign too.  
  
They get to the kitchen. Andrej offers him a beer, and he accepts, be it only for the peculiar, fascinating sight of Andrej uncapping his bottle and taking a long sig at it, his throat working white and gleaming when he swallows. It's a strange game, Chace looking and Andrej knowing he's looking, but none of them says anything about it, instead choosing to bask in the tension and the sun that flows through the half-open blinds and draws the bars of an esoteric prison on the tiled floor.  
  
“Have you ever kissed a girl?”  
  
He should really work on his tendency to blurt out stupid questions when he's with Andrej. It's embarrassing when he's sober.  
  
Andrej looks at him, haughty and disdainful, looking half deceived and half just bored, like,  _'Really, you couldn't come up with something less original?'_  
  
“Yes,” he says, and starts braiding his hair, fast and clean, his eyes fixed on the blond strands.  
  
Chace waits for him to say more.  
  
He does.  
  
“It felt like kissing my sister,” he says with a little bittersweet smile.  
  
They never talk about it again after that.  
  
They talk and watch a movie and make out lazily on the couch in the warm afternoon light, Andrej's legs thrown over Chace's lap, his kisses languid and lascivious. He comes back the week after that, and then the next, until it's become normal for him to spend two or three evenings a week at Andrej's. Sometimes Andrej won't let him in, but he smiles and kisses him on the cheek.  
  
They start sleeping together.  
  
It had been some time for Chace. It hurts the first time but then he gets used to it, the rush, the  _difference_ , even with Andrej, that it is to feel a man's body under his hands, the pleasure, fast and lightning-like, crushing everything inside him.  
  
It's hot and dirty and warm and tender and cruel and everything and more. It never satisfies any of them, surely an indication that they should stop, but they don't – and so they lie together for hours after, chain-smoking and talking about everything that crosses their brain. It's strangely pleasant but it's scary, too, at least for Chace.  
  
At some time in the first month in, Chace realizes that he'd give everything in the world to see Andrej's head fall back, eyes closed, long, white throat gleaming with sweat – to see him so clichédly  _vulnerable_. He feels like he's won something when he does – he feels like he's got nothing left to prove.  
  
He curses himself for falling into Andrej's web, but he knows if he had to do it again he would do the exact same thing (and he knows he will keep falling, falling, falling until he crashes face-down on the ground and breaks his teeth).  
  
*  
  
Once, on set, Leighton asks is he's seeing someone, out of idle conversation. Her legs are crossed and she's typing something on her Blackberry at a speed that Chace would be amazed at, weren't he so tired. He thinks about how he used to think she was desirable, and it seems strange now, even if it isn't completely gone. He's always thought she was more beautiful than Blake (but Blake was funnier, and lighter, sunny, her teeth white and shining when she smiled).  
  
“Yes,” he says.  
  
He doesn't really think about it, it just comes out of his mouth and here it is, he's  _seeing someone_  now.  
  
“Is she pretty?” Leighton asks without missing a beat. She's torn her eyes off her Blackberry, and she looks at him calmly, a little smile playing at the corner of her lips, but Chace can see she's surprised. He wonders for a second if he should be offended, but he figures he'll have just as many occasions to when he'll have had coffee.  
  
“She is.”  
  
It doesn't feel like a lie.  
  
The whole cast gets wind of it pretty quickly (they do spend an unhealthy amount of time together, after all, and Chace knew that Leighton's Blackberry had an use beyond making her look like she's very important and busy). They smile at him in passing (leer, in Ed's case), and say a few words. They ask who it is but he doesn't say, makes a joke about having the right to have a 'secret girlfriend'. Girl fits Andrej well, Chace thinks after he's said it; girlfriend doesn't.  
  
“Mate,” Ed drawls at him in his stupid British accent, so un-Chuck-like it makes Chace dizzy for a second. “So you got yourself a girl, huh? Figures, with your stupid teeth.”  
  
Chace laughs at that, because really, Ed has a point. He's relieved and disappointed at the same time at Ed's reaction. They used to have some sort of a thing back when they lived together, drunken kisses and sloppy make-out sessions. Chace remembers the rash he'd gotten from Ed's stubble, and how Ed had called him princess when he'd complained. They've never been weird about it – what's a little fun between friends, after all? But they never really talked about it either, and then Chace moved out and it stopped and everything just went back to the way it was.  
  
He wonders if he has already gotten a rash from Andrej's stubble, but he can't find it in his memory. Must've happened, though. Sometimes he forgets to shave. It's a strange contrast, stubble on his girly face, long blond hair framing his face. Chace is not sure if he likes it.  
  
Somehow he ends up doing an interview and he says he has someone when the interviewer asks, all bright teeth and fake-looking smile (he doesn't, though. He doesn't have someone – but it's the closest lie). She looks surprised but pleased at the scoop. He invokes privacy when she asks who it is, and he lets her speculate, smiling when she suggests someone a little too ridiculous or a little too close to the truth.  
  
Andrej doesn't say anything. Maybe he doesn't know, or, more likely, he doesn't care. He does interviews of his own and says that no, he isn't seeing anybody. Chace would like not to be disappointed but his stupid heart decides otherwise. They don't talk about it.  
  
Life passes in a strange, lazy way; the days are hot and thick, making his skin moist and prickling with sweat. The filming of  _Gossip Girl_  tires him – he sleeps a lot. When he isn't sleeping, he's with Andrej. He doesn't see his friends so much anymore. To be fair, he doesn't really remember when he's seen them last – sometimes it seems to him like Ed, Leighton, Jessica and Blake are his only friends, along with the rest of the cast. He doesn't know wether to find it pathetic or a good thing.  
  
His mother comes up to visit. She brings him food (it's like her only purpose in life is to feed him, along with the rest of the world); he makes her visit some places. They eat ice-cream at an ice-cream truck near the set, and he shows her where he works, what he does. She says her and her neighbors sometimes have 'Gossip Girl nights'. He laughs and squeezes her hand.  
  
He hadn't realized he missed her so much. He doesn't introduce her to Andrej.  
  
Andrej travels a lot: France, Mexico, Britain, he's always off to somewhere glamorous and fashion-forward, tweeting about partying and dancing all night. Chace tries not to think about him sleeping with other guys, but he can't help it, and sometimes he stays up all night with images roaming in his head, taunting. His brain (these times are the ones in which his brain is his absolute favorite organ) says:  _You never said you would be exclusive_. His heart doesn't care. Chace is annoyed at being such a cliché.  
  
Once, he's in his trailer with Ed – they're smoking weed Ed got from who-knows-where and talking about... something. Ed laughs, the sound low and gravelly. He turns his head; a waft of musk – Dior Homme; but he almost never wears perfume, there must be a reason – and sweat hits Chace's nostrils. Ed smiles, leans down, and kisses him.  
  
He's this sort of person, Ed. He looks at you, smarmy and British and irritably charming, and you can't help but fall a little under his spell. It isn't the same as Andrej – less delicate intricacies in the way their lips mash, teeth and hot, tender flesh, less sensuality, less rawness. They have something in common, though, something Chace can feel in the depths of the kiss, sloppy and drug-induced as it is. They don't care.  
  
They just don't. It's not meant to be hurtful (it is), they just genuinely don't care beyond the feeling, the flesh, the moment. They don't think about it. Chace does.  
  
He lets Ed kiss him. It's reminiscent of old times, memories juxtaposing with reality in his head, the faded colors of an afternoon in Santa Barbara and the vibrant, vivid shade of  _here, now_. He even takes part in the kiss, opens his mouth and lets Ed's tongue slide against his, moans a little.  
  
Ed isn't gay. Chace never has been able to really define him – how do you define someone like Ed, anyway? He gave up at some point, when it got really ridiculous. He's seen him be pretty much anyone, anything, be British and American in turns, a partier, a straight man, a lover, a friend, a junkie, a brother. Mysterious, stupid, simple, drunk, desperate, crying, happy, high. At war. In love.  
  
He doesn't feel like he's cheating. Instead of torturing himself, he decides to let things go, and so he does.  
  
He lets loose.  
  
*  
If Andrej notices – he must have: he is almost frighteningly clever, always noticing details, his eyes turning sharp and golden – he doesn't say anything. Chace hates that it bothers him, but it does, it makes him itch and makes something like jealousy – but it isn't, it shouldn't be – crawl under his skin.  
  
He'd never thought he'd be in that position someday, the  _cheated on_ , the unsatisfied, the longing one. But he is. And he remembers the time when he was okay with casual sex, but then he wasn't, and it was when the problems started.  
  
It's more complicated than that, really. He hates this expression, he feels like a beaten housewife, making complicated something that really isn't, hiding the bruises and blaming a door, a too-hard life, a baby on the way – but it's true. It's more complicated than that. Andrej isn't the bad guy. He is – he is who he is, and he never lied about it, never lied about being futile and volatile and maybe even introduced himself as more shallow than he actually is.  
  
Chace isn't the bad guy either. All this – all this is so messed-up,  _God_ , so ridiculously difficult for something that should have been simple...  
  
"Let's do something," Andrej says someday, as they dance in a club downtown, sweating bodies glittering with sweat and pressed together in a way that is probably illegal in a few states.  
  
Chace is not someone who can think – let alone form a coherent sentence – while rutting against his almost-boyfriend with what sounds suspiciously like Lady Gaga blasting in his ear.  
  
Apparently, Andrej is. Figures.  
  
"You wanna do something," he yells in Chace's ear, and it isn't a question, as though he knows they'll do it so he doesn't even bother. It mildly irritates Chace.  
  
"No," he yells, just to be contrary.  
  
To his surprise, Chace doesn't insist. The night loses itself in hot skin and moist murmurs.  
  
Chace could swear he saw something like wistfulness in Andrej's eyes at some point, but he doesn't want to care, and he doesn't. Ta, he says to himself, willing himself to feel revengeful and uncaring, but mostly just feeling empty. He's so bad at this stuff.  
  
He doesn't come home with Andrej that night. Instead he goes back to his apartment and he drowns himself in Aretha Franklin's deep, soulful voice.

  
*

Andrej wants to get a tattoo. Chace has never seen him so excited. He goes on and on about it, his eyes shining, gesturing wide and happy like the child he never ceased to be. He talks about it in an interview and so there's a little bit of it in the newsstands, too, his Gaultier bride photo – the press loves this one – and the unoriginal caption: 'Androgynous model to get a tattoo?'   
Leighton is reading the article when he arrives to the set, a Starbucks cup precariously balanced on his forearm. She rolls her eyes at him as he presents it to her with a smile, trying not to drop the four other boiling cups he's holding against his chest.  
  
Gah. He always forgets how fun it is to be on coffee duty.  
  
"Here you go, m'lady," he drawls, and she smiles, charmed despite herself.  
  
He sets down the cups on a table nearby and slouches in a chair.  
  
"Something interesting in there?" he asks casually.  
  
Leighton shrugs – there's something tense about the set of her shoulders, almost guarded. Chace has heard around the set that she's broken up with Seb. Apparently it's true. He wonders why she looks so much more beautiful when she's not invincible.  
  
"You want to talk about it?" he asks softly.  
  
Leighton turns a sharp look over to him, and he shrugs – even he doesn't really know where this sudden sympathy comes from. He's never really been the sympathetic type. He's not fleshed out enough, or so he thinks: he just doesn't have anything to say when it comes to things like that, matters personal and made of delicate, painful intricacies.  
  
"No," she answers.  
  
Figures, he thinks, a little relieved.  
  
He points to the magazine, Andrej's picture, his chin high and proud, the dress hugging his lithe body in mate golden gauze.  
  
"I'm sleeping with him," he says. When Leighton returns him nothing but a blank stare, he adds: "Andrej Pejic."  
  
Leighton looks at him for a moment, nothing reflecting in her eyes but the hard, indifferent sun. She opens her mouth as though to say something, closes it, once, twice.  
  
Then she takes a gulp of coffee and she just says, "Okay."  


*

When he wonders where Andrej is, when he doubts, when there is nowhere else to go but here, his head, his thoughts, his paranoia, he calls Ed. He's not always available – a few times Chace only gets the voicemail, Ed's ridiculously hot British voice slurring, obviously intoxicated, "Hey, mate – you reached Ed Westwick's voice mail." A beat and then his voice that drops low and gravelly, "perfect place for dirty talk" and the sounds of whooping behind him, and he lets a voicemail, careful not to let any of his – distress or whatever – slip, complaining about Ed not changing his voicemail, seriously, he's had it for a least four years, it's getting old, and laughing.

Other times, Ed is here. He catches on pretty quickly – the bastard has always been a good reader of emotions, most of the time he just doesn't give a shit.

He invites Chace over. The first time, he comes unprepared, and they have sex on the rug in the living-room because they don't want to wait until they reach the bedroom. Afterwards, as they lie naked and sweating on the floor, Chace idly makes the remark that he'd never seen Ed's new place fully furnished before.

Ed looks uncomfortable. Chace understands why, but he doesn't clear the misunderstanding, doesn't say he doesn't want a relationship, doesn't explain. He's tired of being the nice guy all the time.

Once, Andrej and him meet as Chace is coming back from one his sexcapades, his skin still prickling with sweat under his shirt. He can't wait to take a shower.

Andrej looks magnificent, as always. His hair is flowing like a shiny, golden river on his shoulders, there is color high on his cheekbones, he's buzzing with heat and glitter, covered in it from head to toe.

"Chace," he slurs, sounding surprisingly sober.

Andrej never gets quite drunk.

"Let's get crazy," he adds, his eyes gleaming in the half-darkness.

Chace doesn't want to get crazy. He's tired of crazy, of insane, of glittering mad, of shiny and golden, of silver, of gems. He's tired of the voracious, searing kisses that leave you breathless. He's tired of running. He doesn't want all that.

"Okay," he says.

Andrej's eyes tell him what he'd already guessed – that he knows about his tiredness, but that he'll carry on anyway.

*

He's really close, really, really close, too close, maybe? His hair is tickling Chace's neck, and there's his mouth somewhere, hot and slick against his skin, maybe his throat, maybe... but everything is blurry and unsure. Is this really the night that writhes so furiously beneath him, her eyes but slivers of shimmering black?

Andrej's voice attains him dimly through his curtain of dizziness.

“You never get tired of all this, baby?” he says, his voice slurred and a little mean. “You never get tired of being so _proper_? So perfect?”

Chace doesn't think he is perfect. He doesn't think he is proper either, especially not like that, snapped and vicious like an insult.

“Don't you ever get tired of being who you are, Andrej?” he retorts. “The night, the glitter, the sex – doesn't it bore you, in the end?”

It feels like a fight. His throat feels dry and papery (he imagine for a minute how blood would feel against its walls, thick, luscious red).

And there is, all of a sudden, Andrej closer than ever, holding his face between sticky palms, looking at him with crazy, bloodshot eyes. He's never looked so _real_.

“I _never_ get bored,” he spits, his beautiful face mangled by the shadows. _Ugly, ugly_ , Chace thinks revengefully.

Chace cackles, a little madly.

“Of course you don't,” he breathes.

Andrej catches by the nape, his hand stronger than it should be, long, white fingers holding his throat in an iron grip – as though he were trying to strangle him.

“I'm not staying here,” he says under his breath, a low stream of slurred, violent words, “I'm gonna get the fuck out of here and fuck off to Argentina, or – whatever. I'm not staying here, I'm changing, I don't care about this world, I don't care about this life, I don't care about being famous, I'm not like you, I'm not like you...”

Chace laughs, a little strangled.

“Prove it,” he spits with a rage he didn't know he had in him. He knows he is pathetic, but at least he _knows_ (it).

Andrej lets him go – suddenly his hand is not here anymore and Chace falls backwards in the cushions, and Andrej laugh, his teeth white and bright and his throat long, creamy, exposed.

“Sure,” he says easily.

He doesn't make good on his promise that night. They miraculously make it to Andrej's apartment and they fall on the bed, exhausted, half-snuggled in the still-made bed.

When they wake up and that Andrej looks at Chace over his breakfast plate, his eyes dark and intent, Chace doesn't think much about it.

Retrospectively, he should have.

*

Leighton and him don't talk much about Andrej. She knows, and he knows she knows, and sometimes when he arrives at the set hungover or looking so tired and worn-out (he knows this look by heart: he's seen it enough times in the mirror), they trade looks, but that's about it.

His mother doesn't know. She knows he has someone, but she also knows it's not the kind of person he'll bring home for diner. She's clever like that, his mother. His father doesn't ask.

Things don't quiet over.

They could, but they don't.

Andrej still goes out and parties a lot, Chace still resents him for about everything, the cheating, the glitter and the drugs. Chace sleeps with Ed. Andrej doesn't care. Ed doesn't care either (except when he's biting Chace's shoulder and mumbling something broken into his skin, but that doesn't count). Chace cares. Chace cares so much it hurts. He shuts up about it.

Leighton and him grow closer. Sometimes they go out to this club he likes on the Fifth on sunday, where there is jazz and leather booths and everything feels heavy-lidded and warm. They share whispered stories and glasses of amber-colored Jim Beam, smiling at each other in this fond, friendly way they have.

Chace wishes his life could always be as simple as it is when he's with Leighton.

He doesn't grow more confident. He still tries desperately to _fit in_ , and only half-succeeds. _Gossip Girl_ goes on, gets renewed for a new season they didn't quite believe in (or maybe they didn't want to, Chace isn't sure, because they're not teenagers anymore, but they celebrate anyway, strong slaps on the back and girly kisses and booze, lots of booze). Chace gets offered some roles, one of which he takes. He's on set for three months, playing a watered-down junkie with relationship issues. He feels strangely _true_.

Andrej doesn't like the beard he has to let grow for the shooting, but Chace just shrugs, as though to tell him to deal with it. Andrej smiles and moves on. Chace shaves the beard off two months later.

Andrej is ecstatic about his tattoo. He got it on the nape of his neck, the dark shape of a woman's mouth, half-open. Chace know what she's slurring in Andrej's neck. She says 'freedom'. Andrej touches it constantly.

They still have sex. It's oddly _good_ , considering how apart they've grown. They pull and push and fight, groaning hot insults against each other's skins, but somehow it never goes awry, always ends up mind-blowing, Andrej's hips arching against his, the impossible curve of his back, his hair strewn on Chace's back.

Andrej always smokes after sex.

As for almost everything he does, his coaches told him to stop. It would damage his health, they said, damage his fair skin, his white, white teeth... he laughed at them. He said 'If I can't live, I don't want to do this.' They let him. They don't want him to leave, not yet.

Andrej told him about that in bed, a few months ago – he was giggling softly, marveling out loud at 'these people's stupidity'. Chace laughed too, for lack of a better thing to do.

He doesn't quite know where he stands. He never does. The only time he feels quiet is when he acts: when he feels free to be someone else, to be confident, broken, beautiful, _human_. Everything else is too hectic and too loud. Life, he sometimes reflects, is not for him. He's not made to be alive – he just _knows_ it in his guts, strong and almost sure.

Sometimes he wonders why Andrej and him don't break up. They came together almost at random, but now it seems they're stuck together, can't quite pull apart and get on their way. He remembers the beginning, when he was unsure, when he came to see Andrej twice a week to have sweaty, golden sex on his leather sofa. It's not a good memory – it's faded out with time, and now it's pale and ill-looking, sharp sparks of _feeling_ (the leather sticking to his thighs, the sweat forming beads on his brow) and the memory of the sun hitting his shoulder-blades hard enough to burn.

*

They go to a karaoke in December with some of their mutual friends (they don't have a lot: Andrej's crowd makes Chace uncomfortable, and Andrej doesn't care about Chace's friends). Chace brings Leighton along. She's prettier than usual, smiling and bright, her dark curls tied in a loose bun, her body pale and lithe in her flowery dress. Andrej kisses her on both cheeks. She hugs him a little too tightly. They don't really know each other, but they look like they're lifelong friends. It feels to Chace as though they have to stick with each other in times of adversity, and this feels like adversity, dangerous seduction and ambiguous smiles.

They all get drunk slowly but steadily with vodka and whiskey and strong alcohol that burns their throats in this pleasant, almost-painful way. Everyone sings, some of them badly, others better. Chace sings _Colorblind_ and his voice breaks. He hates it.

And then Andrej sings.

Chace rarely really hates Andrej (he doesn't hate him for everything he does, because he knows it's him, it's his nature, and it's his own fault for throwing himself in the lion's den).

Chace rarely really hates Andrej – except when he makes him fall in love again.

It isn't even nearly as pleasant as it sounds.

Chace knows he's fallen for Andrej a long time ago (possibly maybe the first time he saw him, the angular shape of his jaw half-hidden in the darkness). He doesn't like to be reminded of it, though, doesn't like to remember why he stays and stays and hurts himself over and over again.

When Andrej gets on stage, it's a show. Everything with Andrej is a show – his life is a show, his tattoo is a show, his words are a show. Even the way he makes love is a show.

He must have nicked a tube of lipstick from some woman in the room (maybe Leighton, Chace has seen her with this color, vibrant and red, many times), because when he climbs onstage, his lips are painted a bright red that should make him look cheap and slutty but doesn't. His hair falls on his shoulders, and there's a smirk lurking on the corner of his right lip.

And then he starts singing. In French.

He shouldn't decently have the right to sing like that. His voice shouldn't be raw and gravelly, he shouldn't drawl these words like they're a fucking prayer, a filthy, filthy prayer he'd slur in the ear of a debauched priest. He shouldn't touch his thigh and look so startlingly like a woman while he sings a song about being the most beautiful boy in the neighborhood.

( _Regardez-moi, je suis le plus beau du quartier..._ )

He shouldn't sing of bent glances that rub against him. His lashes shouldn't draw long, black shades on his skin.

But they do. He does.

He sings: _“Est-ce mon visage ? Ma peau si finement grainée ? Mon air suave ? Est-ce mon allure ? Est-ce la grace anglo-saxonne de ma posture ?”_

 _All of it_ , Chace wants to whisper (sing, scream, yell, spit, snap), and fervently wishes he didn't know French, wishes that he didn't fucking _understand_ this song Andrej is singing so obscenely, his eyes sparkling, people hanging on his every word even though half of them don't even understand.

“ _Mais prenez garde à ma beauté, à mon exquise ambiguité ! Je suis le roi du désirable et je suis l'indéshabillable...”_

Has he chosen this song on purpose? Is all of this some king of elaborate scheme to torture Chace?

“ _Je suis le favori, le bel ami de toutes ces dames et de leurs maris aussi... Regardez-moi...”_

How can it be so true? How can every word he sings fit him so perfectly (just like everything he wears, falling with an infuriating ease on his unpractical body, full of angles and strange planes)?

This is a trainwreck. Chace is just an innocent bystander, watching everything fall and collapse around him, the vehicle heading for the wall at an inane speed, and Andrej's mouth forming a perfect 'o' (somehow he's stolen a cigarette and is now blowing perfect smoke circles, his lips stretched like a porn star, voice filtering through the white clouds).

“ _J'suis l'favori,”_ he finishes, _“le petit chéri de toutes ces dames, et d'leurs maris aussi...”_

He hops offstage, and everyone applauds with the bewildered air of people who don't quite understand what just happened or just came out of a dream, bleary and wide-eyed but still amazed.

Chace grabs his coat, lets Andrej kiss him on the mouth, a searing, filthy French kiss – figures -, arguably just for the sake of smearing his obscene lipstick across Chace's mouth, and he leaves. He doesn't look back.

If he had, he'd seen Andrej not watching him leave, his head thrown back, laughing like a _femme fatale_.

*

It happens at night. Chace is dreaming about something, he doesn't really know, gaudy colors flying all around, and suddenly there's the sharp press of something metallic against his throat. The air feels like blood, thick and almost bitter.

He opens his eyes to see Andrej looking down at him, his pupils unbearably deep. He doesn't look stoned, or even drunk, but when he talks his voice is shaky – he stutters.

“Ch-Chace,” he says, his voice trembling.

It's only then that Chace realizes there's the edge of a knife titillating his jugular and a hard-on pressing against his stomach.

“Don't you want to d-do something crazy?” Andrej asks, his eyes wide and profound.

Chace doesn't know. His world is fuzzy – he's still lost in a world of sleep, there are colors swirling around Andrej's head, in his stomach, butterflies...

Andrej kisses his jaw. “Do you never g-get tired?” he insists, breath hot against his skin.

He does. He does get tired.

“Do it,” he says, his voice thick with sleep, not really knowing what exactly he's asking for but asking for it anyway, hell, begging for it (on his fucking knees).

“Okay,” Andrej answers, sounding extraordinarily sober.

Then he laughs; he kisses Chace, high on something that isn't drugs, sloppy and messy, and he slits Chace's face open.

*

He does not panic – not really. Waking up in a room he doesn't know isn't really unusual – it happens all the time, and he sort of likes it, for the symbol (he likes the lamps and the ceilings, also, he likes this kind of similar difference he finds in each of them, their soothing neutrality). So he doesn't panic when he wakes up. He doesn't realize immediately.

He sees a crack in the ceiling and thinks that he'll have to talk to the hotel staff about that, and then he tries to do _something_ with his face, smile or maybe swallow his saliva, or cock an eyebrow or whatever, really, and the pain assaults him.

There're no other words.

It assaults him like a rapist would assault a girl, leery and violent, not really precise. It gnaws at his face – tries to tear it apart. The pain doesn't feel like it's bearable. It doesn't feel like there's a way to overcome it, like there is something _after_ it, beyond it. The whole universe is pain. Pain is the only thing – the only god – the only feeling.

“What did you do to me?” is the only he can -- croak out, moan brokenly. “What did you do?” (His voice turning high-pitched, full of hysterics.)

The form sleeping beside him, his head buried in his crossed arms, moans. Then he seems to remember, and there's a jolt running through his body – he sits up and opens his eyes wide, pupils blown.

“I didn't –” (his first instinct is always to protect himself – tricky bastard -, but then he stops, because he _did_ , and he says instead:) “Go back to sleep.”

There are no terms of endearment, for once, and it feels like a cold shower, Andrej's face cold and shut, his guilt closing him up and making him hostile instead of the contrary (self-preservation, he remembers Andrej saying to him, when all of this was but a pot-induced conversation).

He would like to yell and accuse, but his eyelids feel heavy and his head is a ball of cotton in which some bastard has stuck a hundred needles.

He goes back to sleep.

When he wakes again, nothing is clearer. It's night – the room is obscured and there's a hushed quality to the silence, every sound drowned in fabric and reduced to a tiny, strangled cry. A tentative ray of pale light slices the room in two, drawing an ironic barrier between Andrej's sleeping form and Chace's body.

The pain is still here, but it's dulled. Chace checks his IV and finds it labelled Morphine with no real surprise. He's not sure he wants to remember. To understand. He's not sure he knows. He tries to stand and falls back like a rag doll. He wants to yell.

 _Yell_ , for God's sake. He wants to fucking yell because he's so tired of being this doll, this fucking doll in this fucking hospital bed he's not even sure how he's ended up in. 

But he doesn't yell. It's his own little paradox: he's so full of rage and doubts and energy and yet nothing ever comes out, for some reason, maybe himself or maybe some fucked-up need to _belong_ he can't seem to get rid of.

He turns to look at Andrej – his head has rolled to the ride and his mouth is half-open, his eyelashes fluttering on intervals. He shouldn't look like that when he sleeps. Everything about Andrej is so frigging _unfair_.

Afterwards, when he'll think about it, he'll wonder if he should have woken Andrej before, just to push back the moment, just to press a last kiss to his plush, hateful lips. Sometimes he'll feel like something is missing from this moment. _Closure_ , maybe.

But he doesn't. He stands up, wobbling on his knees, enjoying the pale streaks of light on his skin. The first thing he does is walk a few aimless steps, just to check if Andrej hasn't fucked him up to the point that he can't walk anymore. He'd like to say that he thinks Andrej isn't capable of that, but he knows he is.

Walking feels strange, like he has slept for weeks and isn't quite sure which foot he's supposed to put in front of the other. When he'll remember, after, he'll think of everything he did _before_ as some kind of horrible, sadistic countdown.

He stops in the middle of the room, cut in two by a ray of light that peers into the room, blindingly white.

And to think he was stupid enough to fall in love with the bastard. 

There's no point in denying anymore, really. Chace isn't an expert in romance, but he isn't a stranger to love. It doesn't feel all that wonderful – barely does more than twist his gut and make him feel ill half of the time (and giddy the other half, light and dizzy and with no control over himself).

It's not like he wanted it, either. It just sort of happened, and Chace can't really say he tried to avoid it (the boyish eagerness with which he undressed Andrej, licking a hot stripe down his perfect collarbone, sliding his hand down his curved back...). Surely he ought to have been more careful, but it's done now.

He walks to the bathroom in the dark, enjoying the quiet swishing of his feet, and doesn't bother switching the light as he splashes on his face, wincing when the icy drops hit his skin, sharp and vicious, cutting his face in half and tearing it open.

“Fuck!”

He reaches blindly for the switch, he doesn't know why, maybe because of this fucking masochistic impulse that emerges in him sometimes, and then he presses a towel to his face. Then he raises his head and he meets his face in the mirror.

And then everything goes wrong.

Shatters. Boom. Trainwreck.

And then he sees the scar peeking from over the towel. The towel falls on the ground.

Finally he sees it. He looks and he sees it in all of its mystical ugliness, its unbearable glory, its fucked-up, face-splitting, its horrible irony.

He can't help it; he screams.

*

See, Chace likes his face. It can seem a bit egotistical but it isn't, it really isn't. It's just that his face is – has always been – so _convenient._ When he was a kid – his parents told him – everyone was always cooing over him, his “adorable nose”, his “golden hair”. People picked him up and walked around and called him 'beautiful', all because his lashes were a little too long and his skin had a bit of golden in it.

He remembers when he was a teenager. He was never gangly or awkward, a little spotty, hateful thing like the others. He avoided the ordeals of physical self-doubt (or at least, kept it to minimum); the girls still came to him bearing letters and gifts. He liked that he could cry but his eyes would never be blotchy and red – he would never seem pathetic but melancholic like a slick, modern-day Rimbaud.

It's always been one of his best assets. He's not overly smart, or even overly talented, and he wouldn't have been picked out of the sea of candidates for the Nate job if he hadn't been exactly what the producers were looking for – a pretty face. Furniture. Someone to stick in the back and make look beautiful.

Chace doesn't mind. It would be ungrateful to resent his beauty – his charm –, after all the opportunities it provided him with. The modeling, the girls, the boys, the magazines... He just has to smile and the doors are opening, a smile grows on the girls' face, the flashes blind him. It's effortless – so, so easy.

Not everyone gets a chance like that in LA, the chance to have a beautiful face without collagen and botox, and he's learned to treasure it the way he should. Sometimes people frown at him and ask him what he's put in his cheeks to make them look like that. He just smiles.

And so he'd found a way to make it all work, the beauty and this desperate acuity of the world he has, the hunger for fame and the gnawing fear, it was all balanced so precariously, but it worked, it did...

But of course Andrej had to come and break it all. Of course. He had to be the one that made Chace tip over the edge and fall, break his beautiful face, let all the noise of the world roar back in his ears in an unbearable reflux and hurt him... He had to be the one to do _this_. How could he?

He brings his finger to his face, hoping that the hideous scar that cuts his face (red and dirty, running from his right ear to his chin) is only a – an effect of light, or maybe the mirror is broken, yes, that must be it, seven years of bad luck, but at least it would be better, everything but his face, his precious face...

The scar doesn't disappear when he touches it; the pain surges, vivid and sharp, and makes him bite his lip bloody.

*

He works things out.

His life is pretty much reduced to that now: working things out. He works things out with the hospital, gives them money so they don't rat out what happened and threatens them a bit too, for good measure. They don't tell.

He works out the resentment he feels when he wakes up the next morning and Andrej isn't here anymore – the memory of him kneeling on the bathroom floor and apologizing, kissing his scar is still burned in his brain. He doesn't call. He feels he shouldn't have to.

He works things out with his mother, calls her and tells her he'll be going home for a bit. He's tired. His work wears him out. Nothing out of the ordinary, she says. He nods, forgetting she can't see him.

He tries not to think too much, but the world is always here at the brink of his subconscious, threatening to tip and take over at every minute. The noise. The screams. The smells. It's like a permanent assault on his senses, always too much and too intense. He stops taking his medication to make it stop. It doesn't – not really.

Leighton calls on Monday but he doesn't answer, watches the tiny photo of her in a bright flowery dress above the little phone icon. The others don't call. Too busy. Ed sends a porn magazine and a silly little note. He must think Chace is sick.

He feels sick. He avoids the tabloids, the streets, the light. He stays inside and even veils the mirrors, before unveiling them in a fit of rage, angry against his own (melo)dramatics. His face haunts him. He sees it at night, he dreams of it; it floats before his eyes even in daylight, taunting him.

Nothing will hide it. He's been to see surgeons but they say it's too fresh, it's too messy, of course they can do something but they can't make his face go back to exactly what it was before, or maybe they can, but they start talking too fast and Chace flees, can't help it, flees and doesn't come back. The rest just doesn't work.

He decides to go home earlier than planned. There's no need of staying here, in this cold, impersonal house that always tries to trick him into looking at himself. He'll be better at home, with its hardwood floors and his mother, gentle and caressing and _motherly_.

He makes the necessary arrangements quickly and efficiently, head bowed even though it's mostly by phone. No, he won't be at work on monday. Personal issues. Yes. So very personal. Yes, he's aware he'll lose his salary. And his prime. And his friends. Yes, he still wants to do it. No, he doesn't want to speak to Josh. The lease isn't finished. Well, then, we'll just have to finish it, won't we? Money changes hands, or at least bank accounts, and people leave richer and still pretending to be worried.

He is good enough to succeed in not alerting the press, even though the time he goes grocery-shopping (it was getting difficult eating when the only near-edible thing in the house was coconut shampoo) is a near-miss. He doesn't snap, just becomes more cautious.

Andrej tries to call a few times, not nearly enough for what he's done. Chace ignores the calls and the visits and deletes the texts, even resisting the urge to run to the window to watch the gorgeous, hatefully gracious line of Andrej's retreating form. He sends a plastic surgeon's card by the mail, and Chace quietly tears it in twelve even parts before throwing them in a fire he lits. Unnecessarily dramatical, he tells himself. Fuck it, he answers.

Eventually he packs a suitcase that could last a week as well as a month and takes a cab to LAX. He doesn't look back.

No, he doesn't know when he'll be back.

_Beep._

*

Life crashes around him in this quiet way it has, pieces falling one by one and drawing cuts on his face and arms. Chace doesn't comment, and his mother doesn't either, just stays home more to take care of him even if he doesn't need to be taken care of, because she doesn't know what to do, how to deal with this unmendable despair that the mutilation has engraved in him.

People stop calling. The tabloids stop getting curious, suspicious and even vicious. Rumors of him being dead, in rehab, secretly married, gay (haha), a wanted criminal, and so forth, turn into rumors of him having quit, and then no rumors at all. He doesn't feel sad. He feels empty, mostly. He feels like he doesn't feel. Like he can't. Like losing his pretty face has made him immune to everything, and he can do nothing but watch life pass him by, noting distantly its rare beauties and its cracked, split edges.

Dreams, Chace thinks bitterly on these days he spends doing nothing at all, but hiding, hiding – here they are, shattered, beaten to a pulp on the ground. He tries to care, but he can't. Andrej has taken that from him, too. He's taken everything (sometimes when he closes his eyes Chace sees Andrej as a sort of vampire, his mouth red and luscious, blood dripping on his translucent neck as he sucks the life out of those who dare approach him, fucking laughing with that, his fucking gorgeous lips stretched in a boyish smile. He doesn't think he's too far from the truth). Maybe it's not even his fault. Maybe it's just who he is, just as Chace is who he is, nothing without a pretty face to write his feelings on, nothing without the confidence his beauty used to give him and that he's lost – worst, that he still wears, but distorted and ugly.

The first few days feel strange, almost out of place. He fights the urge to go back to the airport and jump on a plane, come back to LA, cruel, familiar LA – but he knows nothing would be the same and so he doesn't, finally. People from his hometown try to come and talk to him, invite him to parties and birthdays and concerts. He doesn't respond to the invitations. He doesn't go. They get the message, with time. He distantly feels that he's being impolite, maybe even rude, but he doesn't care anymore, can't and just doesn't want to. He figures he has the right, after all these years, to be selfish.

He thinks he must be wrong.

(Sometimes when he is alone in the room – it's one of the perks of being here, that he can be alone: that he is almost that no one will hear him and run to him, ask him what's wrong. He never knows what to say when people ask him that. What do you say? - he just opens his mouth and tries to scream. Sometimes he doesn't get to it. Sometimes he does, and it rips his throat. Sometimes he even draws blood.)

There is a some kind of a tacit agreement with his mother that they won't talk about what happened. They go to the local doctor together and draw up an appointment, a check-up of sorts to make sure the wound doesn't get infected. After that, it doesn't exist. If some of the mirrors disappear, they don't talk about it.

Chace thinks she must feel guilty, because somehow it's because of her that he always relied so much on his face. He doesn't really care. He doesn't really care about anything anymore.

He doesn't care that she looked happy when he came home but now she doesn't anymore. He doesn't care that she sometimes trips over her feet, stutters, overall is too cautious and too nice and too much in pain. He doesn't care that he's projecting his own misery on everyone else, and that he knows it. He doesn't care about the nightmares and the ghost of Andrej's breath on his skin, his voice promising that he won't be so pretty anymore, no, no he won't, that he'll be born again, you'll see, Chace, it'll be _fabulous_... He doesn't care about the guilt and the anger pooling in his stomach. It doesn't matter.

He's a month home when his mother brings him the paper one morning, her face creased and her brows furrowed as they have been since he'd returned. He tries to feel guilty, but can't make himself look away from the photo plastered on the front-page of the _GQ._ You're delusional, something in his brain says, but he shuts it down, because he isn't delusional – because he wishes he were, he just wishes he were imagining Andrej's cocksure grin and the thin scar that runs down his face, crossing his nose and cutting his cheek in two.

'Edgy model gets scary,' says the humorless caption, and Chace skims through the almost as humorless article, trying to retain scraps of information that escape him as he reads them.

His smile. His fucking  _smile_ , for God's sake, and these lips, red and full, and his obscenely cocked hip and these eyes that seem to bore right through Chace, sticking a knife in his throat... He doesn't stop his hands from instantaneously curling into fists, and tries to breathe the anger away. In. Out.

In. Out.

He pushes the newspaper away.

'Pass the butter, please?' he asks at last, his voice fainter than he'd have liked, but his face perfectly cheery, even though bordering on manic.

Head bowed, his mother obliges.

 

 

(He doesn't look, but Andrej does a five-page spread in VOGUE the week after. His scar looks like a fucking consecration.)

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The song Andrej sings is 'Le plus beau du quartier' by Carla Bruni.


End file.
